Schoolyard Cops and Robbers- Law Enforcements Role in the School

Through the school-to-prison pipeline, the continuing legacy of de jure discrimination lives on as African-American students are at least three times more likely to be expelled or suspen

Number 2 Volume 37, Number 2

4-1-2015

Schoolyard Cops and Robbers: Law Enforcement's Role in the School-to-Prison Pipeline

M Alex Evans

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Part of the Education Law Commons, and the Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by History and Scholarship Digital Archives It has been accepted for inclusion in North Carolina Central Law Review by an authorized editor of History and Scholarship Digital Archives For more information, please contact jbeeker@nccu.edu

Recommended Citation

Evans, M Alex (2015) "Schoolyard Cops and Robbers: Law Enforcement's Role in the School-to-Prison Pipeline," North Carolina

Central Law Review: Vol 37 : No 2 , Article 4.

Available at: https://archives.law.nccu.edu/ncclr/vol37/iss2/4

SCHOOLYARD COPS AND ROBBERS: LAW ENFORCEMENT'S ROLE IN THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON

PIPELINE

M ALEX EVANS*

Imagine a young man by the name of Kahjah Many believe that he is the

best athlete to come out of the state since Michael Jordan, making him a

favorite son of Apex, North Carolina and Middle Creek High School From

the front desk attendant, to the janitor, to the principal, the entire Middle

Creek community acknowledges him as a prototypical student-citizen, both

in and out of the classroom Kahjah is a 16-year old National Honors

Socie-ty member, as well as an ESPN National Top-5 high-school football recruit

with well over 100 scholarship offers for both his athletic and academic

prowess

It is early in the morning as he walks into school with a group of his

friends the Monday after his team's big state championship win the

previ-ous Friday night Excited to finally join their fellow classmates in

celebra-tion, members of the football team playfully take part in the latest dance

moves with a large group of students as they enter the school building

Nearby Officer Jones, a substitute school resource officer (SRO), sees the

commotion and immediately seeks to break up the gathering of students as

he has no idea who the students are or why they are behaving in such a

rousing manner As Officer Jones approaches the group of students, Kahjah

reaches out to humorously embrace the officer Feeling threatened by the

large student, the officer forcefully attempts to bring Kahjah to his knees

Officer Jones was unaware that Officer Beckwith, the full-time SRO and

* Attorney M Alex Evans is currently a Ph.D student at the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign where he studies Social and Cultural Studies in Education Policy under his advisor, Dr.

Adrienne Dixson He is a graduate of North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham,

North Carolina, where he also obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree The author is eternally grateful to

Attorney Timothy Peterkin and Dr Adrienne Dixson for their vital roles in his development as a scholar.

He also sends his heartfelt appreciation to the North Carolina Central Law Review staff for their

unbe-lievable research and editing cfforts This article is dedicated to the author's parents, siblings, and most

importantly to all of his nicces and nephews who are truly his inspiration May the spirits of our

ances-tors guide us beyond the constraints of our imaginations, and may we build in unison a new legacy with

love, integrity, wisdom, and achievement.

183

184 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAW REVIEW [Vol 37:183

family friend of Kahjah, had built a healthy and, at times, playful

relation-ship with the entire student body

Known popularly as a kind-hearted hugger, Kahjah had no reason to

be-lieve that the new SRO was unfamiliar with him, or his upstanding

charac-ter in the community However, Officer Jones perceived Kahjah's actions

as an imminent threat to his personal safety, justifying his arrest Upon

be-ing placed in handcuffs while on his stomach, Kahjah responded with anger

causing the officer to repeatedly bang his head on the concrete with force

After video of the altercation went viral, even appearing on national

tele-vision, Kahjah lost all of his athletic and academic scholarship offers from

top schools Kahjah was charged, as an adult, with assaulting a police

of-ficer and resisting arrest, both serious offenses that will leave a permanent

mark on his record, which will also affect his future employment

opportuni-ties Now Kahjah suffers from migraines, nightmares, social withdrawal,

severe anxiety, and depression as a result of the incident, along with facing

the harsh reality that his single mother cannot pay for him to go to college,

and his dreams have been crushed

Although the particular facts of this story are imagined, there are

thou-sands of similar instances that take place each day across America The

inclusion of law enforcement officers in schools has created an

unproduc-tive tension within the learning environment, and students of color have

taken the brunt of the residual consequences School districts that have

failed to implement precise procedures and protocols for law enforcement

presence within their schools have particularly intensified the

school-to-prison pipeline.' Professor Erica R Meiners of Northeastern Illinois

Uni-versity highlights the correlations between schools and prisons in forming

the school-to-prison pipeline when she states, "[s]chools and prisons are

public pathways, and these pathways signify individuals' deep histories of

structural inequities These pathways are visible as early as preschool,

where youth of color are expelled and suspended at higher rates than white

children."2

Relatively speaking on America's history of inequities in public

educa-tion, the nation has made progress over the last sixty years; however, with

the emergence of the school-to-prison pipeline, the United States is now

1 The "school-to-prison pipeline" refers to the emerging pattern of tracking students out of

educational institutions through "zcro-tolerancc" policies and tracking them directly or indirectly into

the juvenile and adult criminal systems.

2 Erica Meiners, Resisting Civil Death, 3 DEPAUL J FOR Soc JUST 79, 93 (2009) (discussing

the loss of voting rights, struggles in securing living-wage employment, and denial of access to public

housing and welfare of the incarcerated as part of civil death).

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE

struggling to hold on to the advances of the past.3 Many social justice

advo-cates have worked to eliminate the vestiges of Jim Crow segregation, such

as our system of education that still contains remnants of dejure

discrimi-nation in the form of unambiguous statistics, which reveal disturbing racial

disparities.4 For decades, numerous issues have plagued poor communities

of color, such as rising incarceration rates, poverty, and the lack of access to

quality education.s Thus, the school-to-prison pipeline simply increases the

amount of challenges that many students face each day

Through the school-to-prison pipeline, the continuing legacy of de jure

discrimination lives on as African-American students are at least three

times more likely to be expelled or suspended than their white peers.6

Not-withstanding the fact that schools remain the safest place for children, in

the wake of a few isolated gun violence tragedies, many school districts

have elected to increase security by placing armed officers in every school.'

Since this sudden increase of police presence, high numbers of

African-American youth are being arrested for trivial misbehaviors through

discrim-inatory zero-tolerance policies.9 A number of districts and states nationwide

push students out of schools and into the criminal justice system for

behav-ior that should be handled only within schools.'0 Equally troubling, a recent

study "found that 95 percent of out-of-school suspensions were for

non-violent, minor disruptions such as tardiness and disrespect." '

Between 1997 and 2007, the presence of SROs inflated by 38 percent,12

which allowed school discipline to be reshaped by this increased reliance

on law enforcement to maintain public school order Factors such as the

enlarged presence of SROs contribute to the statistics that show that Black

students are disproportionately placed within the juvenile justice system;'3

3 MICHELLE ALEXANDER, THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF

COLORBLINDNESS, 3 (2010).

4 Id.

5 Id.

6 U.S DEP'T OF EDUC., GUIDING PRINCIPLES: A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR IMPROVING SCHOOL

CLIMATE AND DISCIPLINE i (2014).

7 ADVANCEMENT PROJECT, ALLIANCE FOR EDUC JUSTICE, DIGNITY IN SCH CAMPAIGN &

NAACP LEGAL DEF AND EDUC FUND, INC., POLICE IN SCHOOLS ARE NOT THE ANSWER TO THE

NEWTOWN SHOOTING 1 (2013).

8 Id.

9 Id.; see also American Psychological Ass'n Zero Tolerance Task Force, Are Zero Tolerance

Policies Effective in the Schools? An Evidentiary Review and Recommendations, 63 AM.

PSYCHOLOGIST, 852-62 (2008) (discussing that there is no evidence that zero-tolerance disciplinary

policies and their application to non-violent misbehavior improve.school safety or student behavior).

10 Catherine Y Kim, Policing School Discipline, 77 BROOK L REV 861, 862 (2012).

I1 U.S DEP'T OF EDUC., supra note 6, at ii.

12 Amanda Petteruti, Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools, Nov 2011, at

1, (available at http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/cducationunderarrcst_

fullreport.pdf).

13 Id at 21.

186 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAW RE VIEW [Vol 37:183

therefore school districts must dramatically reduce law enforcement

offic-ers' participation in disciplining procedures School districts must also

es-tablish unambiguous discipline procedures in which officers may or may

not be allowed to take part, along with strict limitations on the use of

exces-sive force and arrests Further, school districts like Wake County Public

School System (WCPSS), which have a particularly aggravating history of

inflicting discriminatory injuries to students, should partake in goodwill

measures to rebuild a community climate of healthy learning and equality.14

While there is a large amount of scholarship discussing the discipline and

policing policies that aggravate the school-to-prison pipeline, this article

specifically uses WCPSS as a model to highlight the challenges that many

school districts face nationwide This article not only evaluates

convention-al methods to extinguish the school-to-prison pipeline that have been

wide-ly introduced, but it also tenders non-conventional methods such as

good-will, as an effort to cure the community from the harms suffered by the

pipeline's powerless targets This model has proven successful in places

like Clayton County, Georgia, and Ohio's Department of Youth Services'

program RECLAIM Ohio that have created programs to reverse the harms

generated by the school-to-prison pipeline.'5

Part II of this paper will examine America's racially discriminatory

crim-inal justice system and climate of law enforcement in America, while

ex-ploring the correlations of this inequitable climate with schools Part III

summarizes extensive data on the school-to-prison-pipeline and analyzes

WCPSS' security and policing policies This section will culminate with

narratives of instances in which students-of-color suffered injuries under

WCPSS'aunjust student discipline and policing practices Part IV will

ex-plore multiple programs that have proven to be successful in improving

school discipline and policing policies to extinguish the school-to-prison

pipeline Finally, Part V will conclude by proposing solutions for WCPSS

and surrounding areas which will ideally serve as a standard of

develop-ment for school districts nationwide that have encountered similar

chal-lenges within their respective school-to-prison pipelines

14 See generally District Facts, WAKE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM, http://www.wcpss.net/

domain/100 (last visited Mar 5, 2015) (Wake County Public School System's enrollment for the

2014-2015 school year was 155,184 students, an increase of 1,884 children WCPSS is the largest school

system in the state of North Carolina and the 16th largest school system in the nation Their student

population has almost tripled since 1980 and as many as 20,000 additional children are expected by

2020.).

I5 Ending the School to Prison Pipeline: Testimony for the Record Before the U.S Sen Judiciary

Comm Subconun on Constitution Civil Rights and Human Rights, 112th Cong (2012) (testimony of

Mike DeWine, Att'y Gen., Ohio) (testimony of Steven C Teske, C.J., Clayton County Juvenile Court).

2015] SCHOOL- TO-PRISON PIPELINE 187

There are many ways in which racial stereotyping can secretly infiltrate

decision-making processes at all levels within the criminal justice system,

with devastating consequences.'6 It is unfortunate that, through law

en-forcement especially, our criminal justice system is anything but covert in

its discriminatory practices." While the United States has the highest rate

of incarceration in the world, totaling over seven times more than countries

like Germany, the racial dimension of mass incarceration is by far the most

striking factual element.'8 America makes up 5 percent of the entire World

population, yet it accounts for 25 percent of the total number of those

im-prisoned.19 The United States is home to growing prisons and jails that

house over two million persons, and has by far the highest incarceration

rate for any developed country.2 0

When the four million people on

proba-tion and the 750,000 parolees are included, the amount of persons under the

control of the State in the U.S triples to nearly seven million, and this

number does not incorporate those retained in Immigration and

Naturaliza-tion detenNaturaliza-tion facilities or U.S penitentiaries outside of the United States.2

1Latinas are four times more likely and African American women are eight

times more likely to be jailed than white women, and three out of four

in-carcerated women are detained for nonviolent crimes.2 2

This obsession with prison expansion has separable and nationwide

pen-alties that extend much further than the dreadful stowing of the nation's

impoverished.23 One out of every fifty U.S citizens is stripped of voting

rights due to imprisonment, and in some states almost 33 percent of

Afri-can-American males are disenfranchised.24

In major cities wracked by cial inequity, nearly 80 percent of young African-American men now have

ra-criminal records, which subject them to a life of discrimination and

restrict-ed rights.25 Amazingly, one in three African-American men will serve time

in prison if current trends continue, and in some cities more than half of all

young adult African-American men are under correctional control, whether

in jail, probation, or parole.26

16 ALEXANDER, supra notc 3, at 4.

188 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAW REVIEW [Vol 37:183

Once one recognizes that an identical pattern of vast racial

disproportion-ality in punishment exists in the criminal justice system as in the juvenile

justice system, the connection with education becomes even more

appar-ent 2 7 "Schools look an awful lot like prisons, and sometimes schools look

more like prisons than do real detention centers."2 8 The parallels are also

recognizable in the administration of daily life inside the walls of schools

through the creation of policies that incorporate juvenile justice laws within

school discipline policies.2 9 Accordingly, an essential inquiry posed by

many juvenile justice advocates questions why schools coast-to-coast

con-tinue to include law enforcement officers within the enforcement of school

discipline procedures This practice has caused schools to feel more like

correctional facilities when they were once one of the few safe havens for

the youth of this country to grow up in peace

A Historical Discrimination by Schools and Law Enforcement

i Desegregation Era

The prevailing feeling amongst the majority of Americans regarding the

landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of

Edu-cation (Brown I), is pro ression Though the "separate but equal" doctrine

from Plessy v Ferguson 3 was overturned, the Supreme Court in Brown II32

only provided remedies for the school districts named in the litigation

be-cause it did not have jurisdiction to sanction remedies across the entire

Na-tion, leaving many school districts plagued by oppressive policies.3 3

"Ulti-mately, implementation of desegregation was left to local authorities

sub-ject to the supervision of federal district judges."3 4

School districts, most notably in southern states, have historically acted

in unfettered solidarity to restrain African-Americans' aspirations and

tal-27 See, e.g., MARC MAURER & RYAN S KING, UNEVEN JUSTICE: STATE RATES OF

INCARCERATION BY RACE AND ETHNICITY 4 (2007) (stating that the United States prison and jail system

is marked by an cngrained racial disparity in the incarcerated population The study also reports that, in

2005, the incarceration rate per 100,000 people was 2,290 for Blacks and only 412 for whites.).

28 MEINERS, supra note 19, at 2-3.

29 Id at 3.

30 Brown v Bd of Educ (Brown 1), 347 U.S 483 (1954).

31 Plessy v Ferguson, 163 U.S 537 (1896).

32 Brown v Bd Of Educ (Brown II), 349 U.S 294, 301 (1954) (holding that District Courts

were to "enter such orders and decrces as arc necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a

racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed").

33 Irving Joyner, Pimping Brown v Board of Education: The Destruction of African-American

Schools and the Mis-Education of African-American Students, 35 N.C CENT L REV 160, 175-76

(2013).

34 Monique Langhorne, The African American Community: Circumventing the Compulsory

Education System, 33 BEVERLY HILLS B Ass'N J 12, 18 (2000).

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE

ents, even within the post-Brown desegregated institutions." Students were

effectively segregated within many schools, as it was common practice to

track African-American students into special education and occupational

classes at disparate rates.3 6 African-American students were barred from

certain extracurricular activities and a large number of districts devised bus

routes to ensure that students were segregated."3 7 African-American

stu-dents during this period also faced intimidating attitudes, dismissals from

school at excessive rates, modest scholastic expectations, and little if any

support to encourage them to finish school

One of the first widely recognized instances of armed officers in schools

is also arguably one of the most deplorable images of the American

educa-tion swstem, which took place at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas in

1957 9 In response to the federal district court ordering admission of nine

African-Americans into Central High, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus

proclaimed a state of emergency, and subsequently ordered troops to

pro-hibit the African-American students from entering the school.4 0 Armed

troops, not disgruntled community members, sought to dismiss the nine

African-American students as they approached the doors of their new

school.4

1 It was only after weeks of pressure, due to foreign policy

implica-tions, that President Dwight Eisenhower acted by sending federal troops to

safely escort the students into the school.42 The iconic image of armed

guards shielding African-American students from a vicious mob of white

protestors represents the modem day school-to-prison pipeline, and quite

literally symbolizes the double standard that is deeply rooted in the criminal

justice system Whites were often allowed to act in violence against

Afri-can-American students with no consequences from government officials,

yet today students of color are arrested at alarming rates for the very same

non-violent acts, for which white students are rarely arrested.43

While under what many believed to be an educational oppression, a great

number of African-American students in segregated schools were able to

overcome these challenges to achieve outstanding success in the arts and

35 DAVID S CECELSKI, ALONG FREEDOM ROAD: HYDE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA AND THE

FATE OF BLACK SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH 170 (1994).

36 Joyncr, supra note 33, at 201.

37 Id.

38 Id at 201-02.

39 Mary L Dudziak, The Little Rock Crisis and Foreign Affairs: Race Resistance, and the Image

ofAmerican Democracy, 70 S CAL L REV 1641, 1659-60 (1997).

40 Id.

41 Id.

42 Id at 1674-75.

43 David Simson, Exclusion, Punishment, Racism and Our Schools: A Critical Race Theory

Perspective on School Discipline, 61 UCLA L REV 506, 532 (2014).

190 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAW REVIEW [Vol 37:183

sciences, as well as in the business and professional world.44 This

discredit-ed the widespread argument that African-American students achieve and

behave at an inferior level than that of other students.4 5 Now

African-American students must confront similar levels of prejudice due to the

school-to-prison pipeline within their schools, which were supportive

learn-46

ing environments under dejure segregation.

ii The Introduction of Law Enforcement to Schools

Many school districts placed additional police officers, security guards,

metal detectors, and surveillance cameras in schools in response to the

April 1999 shooting at Columbine High School 4 7 This tragedy, which

hor-rified parents and teachers across America, proved to be a critical event in

the landscape of school disciplinary procedures.4 8 After the Columbine

tragedy, law enforcement officers were positioned in American schools at

an alarming rate.4 Consequently, schools have become less welcoming and

more frightening to children, largely causing the culture of many schools to

change considerably.5 0 With an increase of law enforcement officers in

schools, there was a policy change to arrest students for minor offenses that

traditionally would be disciplined within the school setting.sI

For a four-year span beginning in 2000, Denver, Colorado saw a 71

per-cent surge in school discipline referrals to law enforcement From 2002 to

2004 the school district paid the Denver Police Department more than $1.2

million annually for police presence in schools.5 3 The District expended this

substantial amount of capital for police involvement in occurrences that

previously resulted in a call to students' guardians or a visit to the front

office.5 4 Between 2007 and 2012, these unintended consequences persisted

as most incidents referred to law enforcement were for detrimental

miscon-duct, "drug violations," code of conduct violations, and defiance, not for

school safety concerns such as possession of a dangerous weapon

44 Brown 1, 347 U.S at 490.

45 Id.

46 Joyner, supra note 33, at 202.

47 ADVANCEMENT PROJECT ET AL., supra note 7, at 5 (referring to Columbine High School in

Littleton, Colorado, where two students killed fourteen other students and two teachers).

48 Id.

49 Id at 6-8.

50 Id at 7-8.

51 Id at 8.

52 Id at 5 Most discipline referrals were for minor misconduct involving foul language,

distract-ing attire, and property damage Only 7 percent of the referrals were for severe conduct, like carrydistract-ing a

firearm to school Id.

53 Id.

54 Id.

55 Id.

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE

iii Current Racial Criminalization of Youth in Schools

Due to the intimate connection between school officials and law

en-forcement, "the hallways of our nation's public schools have become the

portals to the revolving door of the criminal justice system."5 6 With this

increase in the criminalization of schools, students are more often placed

within the grasp of the criminal justice system than the school system,

which traditionally handled misbehavior in solidarity.5 7 There are several

states and districts where it is mandatory to refer students to criminal justice

authorities for petty school-related misbehaviors 8 The criminalization of

student behavior does not stop at issuing referrals, but it in fact has created

a shift towards increasing the presence of law enforcement personnel on

public school campuses.59 This criminalization of schools has transformed

school campuses into well-policed institutions, which produces an

exponen-tially increasing number of school-based arrests.6 0 While learning in this

distracting environment is problematic, students of color suffer at

dispro-portionate rates from this form of criminalization

The prevailing narrative of youth criminalization, which applies

particu-larly to inner-city students of color, labels school children as threatening,

violent, drug-dealing, gang-affiliated, out-of-control mischief-makers 62 The

United States Supreme Court embraced this plot in New Jersey v T.L.O., 6

which stated that according to the "rubric of school safety," children were

"stripped of the full protection provided by the Fourth Amendment;

proba-ble cause, instead of reasonaproba-ble suspicion, became the standard in school

searches."64 Many students' perspectives on law and justice are tainted

when disciplinary procedures in schools undervalue basic principles of

lib-erty through abridged individual rights for students.65 The use of police

officers to enforce school rules constricts the scope that students recognize

themselves because the law is not just a set of rules.66

56 Sarah Jane Forman, Countering Criminalization: Toward A Youth Development Approach to

School Searches, 14 SCHOLAR 301, 328 (2011).

57 Simson, supra note 43, at 518.

63 469 U.S 325, 346 (1985) (The principal case in school search jurisprudence that created the

current standard of reasonable suspicion is this 1985 case involving the search of a fourteen-year-old

high school student's purse To determine what was reasonable in the context of a public school, the

Court balanced the students' interest in privacy against the substantial interest of teachers and

adminis-trators in maintaining school discipline.).

64 Forman, supra note 57, at 305.

65 Id.

66 Id.

192 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAW RE VIEW [Vol 37:183

School discipline also serves as an instrument of political and legal

so-cialization, which sends a regulating message to students of color about

"their relationship with government, society, and the law itself." 67 Sarah J.

Forman, an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy

School of Law, inquires as to what type of lessons are taught to students

when they are subjects of pats, frisks, sniffs, and searches on a consistent

basis? 6 8 Students who are subjected to such a standard of school discipline

may feel that the law is prejudicial and question its validity, because adults

in positions of influence have treated them with suspicion and contempt

Students' trust in a democratic society is specifically lost in instances when

severe zero-tolerance policies subject violators to harsh punishments

re-gardless of the circumstances of the infraction.70

This type of damaging socialization is especially harmful to adolescent

students, because during this period students undergo "significant

psycho-logical, intellectual, and emotional development." 7 ' Professor Forman

ex-plained that brain science and developmental psychology suggest that

teen-age youth are in the process of developing their individualities, and are

coming to understand their place in society.72 Adolescent students are being

shaped and programmed into patterns of understanding and conduct that

influence the way they relate with the world in which they live, and decide

"what type of adults they will become."7 3 As a result, many of these

adoles-cents have extremely delicate characters that make them exceptionally

sus-ceptible to outside influences and burdens.74 During the adolescent years,

students absorb as much from their exchanges with authority figures and

peers as they do from their schoolbooks.7 5 Therefore, the overbearing

puni-tive policies in a number of America's schools, where students are viewed

with suspicion and treated like hazards, generate a "self-fulfilling

prophe-cy" that "when students are treated as threats to society, they become

72 Id (See also Sarah Spinks, Inside the Teenage Brain: Adolescent Brains Are Works in

Pro-gress, FRONTLINE, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pagcs/frontlinc/shows/teenbrain/work/adolesccnt.html

(indicating that the pcriod of"hardwiring" occurs during adolcscencc)).

73 Id.

74 Id.

75 Id at 307-08.

76 Id at 308.

SCHOOL- TO-PRISON PIPELINE

III EXPOSING THE PIPELINE DATA

In January 2014, the Obama Administration announced new guidelines to

school districts calling for them to condense zero-tolerance policies and not

to arrest students for slight disciplinary infractions." Data gathered by the

U.S Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) shows that

the school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately marginalizes youth of

col-or Former U.S Attorney General Eric Holder said African-American

stu-dents were disciplined more severely and more frequently because of their

race.78

UCLA's Civil Rights Project, which surveyed data from more than

26,000 American secondary schools, estimates that more than two million

students were pushed out during the 2009-2010 school year 79 This means

that out of every nine secondary school students, one was suspended at least

one time during that school year.80 The study selected secondary schools for

this survey because, at that level, children of color, as well as students from

other "historically disadvantaged groups," have a much higher probability

than other students to be suspended.81 Suspension rates since 1970 have

increased for all students across demographic lines; however, students of

color have seen drastic increases.8 2 African-American students' suspension

rates saw a 12.5 percent increase from 11.8 in 1970 to 24.3 in 2009-2010;

during the same period, the rate only increased by 1.1 percent for White

students, from 6 to 7.1 percent.8 3 In short, the increase is more than eleven

times higher for African-Americans than for Whites.84 It seems probable

that racial stereotyping, whether deliberate or unconscious, has contributed

to the inequalities and can shed light upon at least some part of current

ra-cial disproportionality in school discipline.8 5

Nationally, high suspension rates in middle and high schools have

in-creased dramatically over time for African-American students.8 6 One in

77 GUIDING PRINCIPLES, supra note 6.

78 Id.

79 Daniel J Loscn & Tia Elena Martincz, Out of School & Off Track: The Overuse of

Suspen-sions in American Middle and High Schools, THE UCLA CENTER FOR CIVIL RIGHTS REMEDIES AT THE

CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT (Apr 2013),

85 Simson, supra note 43, at 524.

86 Losen & Martinez, supra note 79, at 3.

193

2015]

194 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAW REVIEW [Vol 37:183

four African-American secondary school children, and nearly one in three

African-American middle school males, were suspended at least once in

2009-2010." It is significant to note that Black female secondary students

were the most marginalized group, as they were suspended at a much

high-88

er rate of more than 18 percent, than any other racial or ethnic group.

A 2010 report entitled, "Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in

Crisis," disclosed overwhelming racial and gender disproportions at the

middle school level, presenting much greater rates than appear when

collec-tive K-12 data are evaluated.8 9 For instance, nearly 30 percent of Black

males in middle school were suspended, compared to just 10 percent of

White males Likewise, almost 20 percent of Black females were

suspend-ed, in comparison to only 4 percent of White females.90 Additional

assess-ment of data for eighteen of America's largest school districts discovered

that in fifteen of those districts, at least 30 percent of all Black males

en-rolled were suspended at least once.9

' Throughout these urban districts,

hundreds of different schools had unusually high suspension rates of 50

percent or higher for African-American males.9 2

The Civil Rights Project's study demonstrates that 2,624 secondary

schools in 323 districts across the nation suspended 25 percent or more of

their student body.93 This study also shows that 519 of these schools had

suspension rates equal to or exceeding 50 percent of their respective student

bodies.94 The study labels schools as hotspot secondary schools if they

sus-pend more than 25 percent of any subgroup.95 Chicago had the highest

number of high-suspension hotspot schools in the nation with eighty-two

schools, while Wake County, North Carolina had the highest number in

North Carolina, with thirty-eight hotspot schools.96

When considering a student's scholastic life, the extensive abuse of

sus-pensions and expulsions has tremendous costs.9 7 When suspended or

ex-pelled from school, students are often unsupervised and are not able to take

advantage of teachers, healthy peer exchanges, and mature mentorship

of-fered in schools.98 School officials fail to help suspended students cultivate

SCHOOL- TO-PRISON PIPELINE

the skills and approaches they desire to develop their conduct and

circum-vent future difficulties.99 "Suspended students are less likely to graduate on

time and more likely to be suspended again, repeat a grade, drop out of

school, and become involved in the juvenile justice system."0 0 Jon Powell,

a law professor at Campbell University Law School in Raleigh, North

Caro-lina states that what is taking place within WCPSS at high schools like

En-loe and Broughton has a proximate and long-lasting consequence on those

affected students who choose to apply for college or try to get a job,

be-cause of the criminal charges filed against them for minor classroom

mis-behavior.'0'

In 2013, the American Pediatrics Association stated that research

demon-strates that schools with higher rates of out-of-school suspension and

expul-sion are not safer for students or faculty.102 The Civil Rights Project

re-search demonstrates that the idea that we must "kick out the bad kids so the

good kids can learn" is a myth, because there are many viable alternatives

that do not result in chaotic school environments.0 3 Harsh punitive

re-sponses do more harm than good, and reserving out-of-school suspension as

a measure of last resort can lead to higher achievement and improved

grad-uation rates.1

B Wake County Public School System Pipeline

The fight against the school-to-prison pipeline in North Carolina is

cur-rently at a fever pitch as WCPSS has received a number complaints from

various organizations, including: the American Civil Liberties Union of

North Carolina Legal Foundation, the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at

the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for

African-American Children, North Carolina Heroes Emerging Amongst

Teens (NC HEAT), the North Carolina Justice Center, the North Carolina

chapter of the NAACP, and the University of North Carolina Center for

Civil Rights.'os The glaring solidarity of this large group of juvenile justice

99 Id.

100 Id.

101 Caroline Cooper, Black Students and the 'School-to-Prison Pipeline', AL JAZEERA AMERICA

(Jan 22, 2014, 10:00 AM),

http://america.aljazccra.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2014/1/22/black-students-andthcschooltoprisonpipelinc.html.

102 Loscn & Martinez, stipra note 79, at 2.

103 Id.

104 Id.

105 LEON W RUSSELL, HILLARY 0 SHELTON & JOTAKA EADDY, SHADOW REPORT OF THE

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE TO THE UNITED NATIONS

196 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAWREVIEW [Vol.37:183

advocates is just one piece of a puzzle that tends to show the magnitude of

the pipeline concerns within WCPSS, as well as the State of North

Caroli-na

Legal Aid of North Carolina supervising attorney, Jason Langberg,

sug-gested that WCPSS has one of the most conspicuous school-to-prison

pipe-lines in the entire nation, which is largely due to WCPSS having one of the

greatest long-term suspension rates in the state.0 6 Langberg's examination

of this data at WCPSS revealed that there are more than 20,000 suspensions

per year that last for ten days or more.0 7

It is important to note that WCPSS' suspension rates have declined in

re-cent years For example, throughout the 2011 and 2012 school years,

WCPSS produced fewer than 15,000 short-term suspensions and nearly 400

long-term suspensions; however, the racial discrepancies in the data are still

apparent.08 According to Langberg's analysis of the data, Black WCPSS

students are suspended five times as often as their white peers.09 For

ex-ample, in Wake County, less than 20 percent of white students caught with

cell phones were suspended last year That number more than doubles when

compared with the same rate of Black students."o Specifically, at Enloe

High School, Black students represent less than 40 percent of the

popula-tion, yet receive nearly three-fourths of the short-term suspensions and,

shockingly, slightly more than nine out of ten of the long-term

suspen-sions.'''

In Wake County, African-American students are subject to 62.3 percent

of short-term suspensions (less than ten days), 67.5 percent of long-term

suspensions (ten or more days), and 73.4 percent of school-based

delin-quency complaints, while only making up 26.1 percent of the total student

population.1 2 During the 2011-2012 academic year, African-American

students had, by far, the highest term suspension rate at 23.6

short-term suspensions per 100 African-American students, followed by

Ameri-can Indian (13.5), Hispanic (10.1), Multi-Racial (9.3), white (3.7), and

Asian (1.2) students."3 African-American students were 6.4 times more

COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION CONCERNING THE INTERNATIONAL

CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION 51 (2014).

106 Cooper, supra note, 101.

112 Jason Langberg & Jennifer Story, The State of the School to Prison Pipeline in the Wake

County Public School System, LEGAL AID OF NORTH CAROLINA, Aug 2013, at 4, available at http://

www.legalaidnc.org/statcofpipcline.pdf.

113 Id.atill-13.

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE

likely than White students to receive a suspension.' 14 Black students were

24.7 percent of the total student population, but received 60.2 percent of

suspensions and were 55.9 percent of students who received at least one

suspension."s Thirteen percent of African-American students were

sus-pended at least once, compared to 2.5 percent of White students."'6 Black

male students were 12.2 percent of the total student population, but were

37.7 percent of students who received at least one suspension."7

While nearly 6 percent of the entire student population was removed

from school at a minimum once during the 2011-2012 school year, 23

per-cent of Black, 13.3 perper-cent of Hispanic, and 11.7 perper-cent of multi-racial

students with disabilities were suspended on one occasion or more 1 18

Soci-oeconomically underprivileged students (characterized by students who

qualify for free or reduced price lunch) made up a third of the total student

population during the 2011-2012 school year, but were almost two-thirds

of suspended students." 9 The proportion of students receiving free or

re-duced price lunch at a particular school was compared with suspension

rates, which produced findings that the more underprivileged a school was,

the greater its rates of suspension.12 0 This is particularly noteworthy

be-cause, as a study conducted by the Civil Rights Project of the Center for

Civil Rights Remedies suggests, the highest rates of suspension are

ob-served when the intersection of race, disability, poverty, and gender are

calculated; making poor African-American students with disabilities the

most at risk demographic to be subject to suspension in WCPSS.1 2 1

Recent data from North Carolina also rebuts arguments in support of

pu-nitive school discipline procedures, which attribute more frequent and more

severe misbehavior to higher suspension rates for students of color.12 2 The

121 Losen & Martincz, supra note 79, at 3.

122 Id.; see also Kyle Rogers, Obaina Asks Public Schools to Ignore Bad Behavior by Black

Stu-dents, EXAMINER.COM, (July 30, 2012, 12:41 PM),

http://www.cxaminer.com/articlc/obama-asks-public-schools-to-ingorc-bad-behavoir-by-black-studcnts (indicating that the reason Black students are

more likely to be disciplined is because, "Black students are more likely to misbehave."); Roger Clegg,

How the Obania DOJ s School-Discipline 'Guidance' Will Hurt Well-Behaved Poor Kids NATIONAL

REVIEW, (January 8, 2014, 4:43 PM),

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/367901/how-obama-dojs-school-discipline-guidance-will-hurt-well-behaved-poor-kids-roger-clegg (indicating that some racial

and ethnic groups are more or less likely to misbehave.); Ruben Navarrete, Obama's school discipline

plan is overkill, CNN, (March 28, 2014, 8:42 AM),

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/28/opinion/navarrette-school-discipline-white-house/ (advising that "we stop meddling in the schools" and confront issues like

"poverty, despair and broken homes," which according to the author causes students to "get into

trou-197

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198 NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL LAW REVIEW [Vol 37:183

data illustrates that "Black first-time offenders in the State of North

Caroli-na were far more likely than White first-time offenders to be suspended for

minor offenses, including cell-phone use, disruptive behavior, disrespect

and public displays of affection." 23 This data on first-time offenders,

bro-ken down by race and type of infraction, is not commonly available or

con-veyed to the community at-large, but was acquired by attorneys through a

freedom-of-information request.124 The attorneys then filed an OCR

com-plaint against Wake County School Board of Education affirming that

dis-trict data, like that mentioned above, proves that Black first time offenders

received much greater percentages of out-of-school suspensions than of

White first-time offenders for equal categories of offenses.12 5

ii WCPSS Security and Law Enforcement Policies

An analysis of the data pertaining to WCPSS does not seem to align itself

with the state of affairs in the school system While the data tends to rebut

the argument that officers are needed to prevent dangerous activities,

WCPSS has continued to finance an extremely expensive security unit;

notwithstanding this fact, only 5 percent of out-of-school suspensions are

issued for disciplinary incidents usually defined as severe or hazardous,

such as any possession of dangerous weapons or illegal substances.12 6

WCPSS' extensive security branch includes at least 130 employees.2 7

There are sixty-four full-time law enforcement officers, an unknown

num-ber of part-time off-duty law enforcement officers, sixty-one private

securi-ty officers, and nine securisecuri-ty department staff.12 8

Further, there are notable gaps in the available information regarding

these security implementations which, if made available, would help to

determine their necessity During the 2011-2012 school year, WCPSS and

local law enforcement agencies severely limited public information about

their security practices while exhausting millions of taxpayer dollars.'2 9 No

data is collected in reference to school-based restraints, searches,

interroga-ble." The author also asserts that federal school discipline initiatives cause students of color to identify

themselves as victims.).

123 DANIEL J LOSEN, NAT'L EDUC POLICY CTR., DISCIPLINE POLICIES, SUCCESSFUL SCHOOLS

AND RACIAL JUSTICE 8 (2011).

124 Id.

125 Complaint at 36, NAACP v Wake Cnty Bd of Educ (Sept 24, 2010); see also T Keung Hui

& Mandy Locke, Federal civil rights complaint filed against Wake Schools, NEWS & OBSERVER, Sept.

25, 2010.

126 Russell J Skiba & M Karega Rausch, Zero Tolerance, Suspension, and Expulsion: Questions

of Equity and Effectiveness, in HANDBOOK OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT: RESEARCH, PRACTICE, AND

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES, 1063, 1068-69 (Carolyn M Evertson & Carol S Weinstein eds., 2006).

127 Langberg, supra note 112, at 112.

128 Id.

129 Id.